Is it important to have inbound links?
The answer is yes!
It is important to understand the benefits of providing your website with inbound links. Some say that content is king, if that is true then inbound links are queen!
Why you ask, Google for one places a lot of weight on inbound links, so much so that their PR ranking system work highly on the number of inbound link coming to your site.
Inbound links are not the easiest things in the world to get, you want people to link to your site and not necessarily have a reciprocal relationship with then unless you really think that their site is worthwhile to your visitor. The aim here is to build a quality network of inbound links using targeted keywords or key phrases as the actual link coming to you. BUT, the who and why are just as important as the link itself. Getting links from any old place can actually cause you harm with the search engines.
Ok, lets start by asking what are inbound links / backlinks / inlinks?
Definition from Wikipedia
“Backlinks (or back-links [UK]) are incoming links to a website or web page. Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of webnavigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO). The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inlinks
So as you can see, inbound link have become a real necessity, for SEO and for the sites reputation. One of the best ways to get your site ranked high for your specific keyword is to get “one directional inbound links” preferably from high ranking relevant sites, site with good PR rankings. Google for one rates an inbound link like a “vote” for your site by use of the relevant keyword that it is linking from..
In order to get a placement on the search engines you will need a variety of links, from many sites that are relevant to your target keyword. But this can be difficult as sites similar to yours can often be competitors.
Writing articles can be a good source of inbound links to your site, but be aware that many of these article websites have low page rank (PR). Look around for those with higher than average PR ranking and choose these to list your articles.
Some examples to have a look at:
- Ezinearticles - PR: 6
- GoArticles - PR: 6
- ArticleBase - PR: 6
- ArticleDashboard - PR: 5
- Buzzle - PR: 5
Other source can be through posting comments on reputable forums and blogs.
So, backlinks do count, the more the merrier but remember – from higher page rank sites.